Google Maps is a desktop web mapping service developed by Google. It offers satellite imagery, street maps, 360° panoramic views of streets (Street View), real-time traffic conditions (Google Traffic), and route planning for traveling by foot, car, bicycle (in beta), or public transportation.
Google Maps began as a C++ desktop program designed by Lars and Jens Eilstrup Rasmussen
at Where 2 Technologies. In October 2004, the company was acquired by
Google, which converted it into a web application. After additional
acquisitions of a geospatial data visualization company and a realtime
traffic analyzer, Google Maps was launched in February 2005. The
service's front end utilizes JavaScript, XML, and Ajax. Google Maps offers an API that allows maps to be embedded on third-party websites,[1] and offers a locator for urban businesses and other organizations in numerous countries around the world. Google Map Maker allows users to collaboratively expand and update the service's mapping worldwide.
Google Maps' satellite view is a "top-down" view; most of the high-resolution imagery of cities is aerial photography taken from aircraft flying at 800 to 1,500 feet (240 to 460 m), while most other imagery is from satellites.[2] Much of the available satellite imagery is no more than three years old and is updated on a regular basis.[3] Google Maps uses a close variant of the Mercator projection, and therefore cannot accurately show areas around the poles.
The current redesigned version of the desktop application was made
available in 2013, alongside the "classic" (pre-2013) version. Google Maps for mobile was released in September 2008 and features GPSturn-by-turn navigation. In August 2013, it was determined to be the world's most popular app for smartphones, with over 54% of global smartphone owners using it at least once.[4]
In 2012, Google reported of having over 7,100 employees and contractors directly working in mapping.[5]

Directions

Contiguous regions of Google Maps

Google Maps provides a route planner under "Get Directions".[6] Up to four modes of transportation are available depending on the area: driving, public transit (see the Google Transit section below), walking, and bicycling. Trolly Car has been considered in Nepal. In combination with Google Street View,
issues such as parking, turning lanes, and one-way streets can be
viewed before traveling. Driving directions are covered as follows:

Most countries of mainland Eurasia and Africa are covered contiguously, including Nepal,
the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Canary Islands, Cyprus, Malta, Sri
Lanka, most of Indonesia and Timor-Leste. China mainland, Hong Kong,
Macau, Jordan, Lebanon and North Korea have directions available without
connection to other states. Only public transit directions are provided
for South Korea.

All countries of mainland North and Central America are covered contiguously.

All countries of mainland South America are covered. All countries
including Trinidad and Tobago* (*although considered to be part of North
America) are treated contiguously.

All inhabited countries and territories in the Caribbean are
covered, though in general there are no connections between islands.

Additionally, American Samoa, Australia, the Azores, Cape Verde, The
Comoros, The Cook Islands, the Faroe Islands, The Federated States of
Micronesia, Fiji, French Polynesia, Guam, Hawaii, Iceland, Japan,
Madagascar, the Maldives, Mauritius, Mayotte, New Caledonia, New
Zealand, Niue, Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, the Philippines,
Réunion, São Tomé and Príncipe, the Seychelles, Samoa, Taiwan, Tonga,
Vanuatu, Wallis and Futuna are covered as stand-alone regions, as are
Nuuk in Greenland, Sabah in Malaysia, parts of Papua New Guinea, parts
of Solomon Islands and Socotra in Yemen.

Implementation

Like many other Google web applications, Google Maps uses JavaScript extensively.[7]
As the user drags the map, the grid squares are downloaded from the
server and inserted into the page. When a user searches for a business,
the results are downloaded in the background for insertion into the side
panel and map; the page is not reloaded. Locations are drawn
dynamically by positioning a red pin (composed of several partially
transparent PNGs) on top of the map images. A hidden IFrame with form submission is used because it preserves browser history. The site also uses JSON for data transfer rather than XML, for performance reasons. These techniques both fall under the broad Ajax umbrella. The result is termed a slippy map[8] and is implemented elsewhere in projects such as OpenLayers.
In October 2011, Google announced MapsGL, a WebGL version of Maps with better renderings and smoother transitions.[9]
The version of Google Street View for classic Google Maps requires Adobe Flash.[10]

Extensible and customization

As Google Maps is coded almost entirely in JavaScript and XML,
some end users have reverse-engineered the tool and produced
client-side scripts and server-side hooks which allowed a user or
website to introduce expanded or customized features into the Google
Maps interface.
Using the core engine and the map/satellite images hosted by Google, such tools can introduce custom location icons, location coordinates and metadata, and even custom map image sources into the Google Maps interface. The script-insertion tool Greasemonkey provides a large number of client-side scripts to customize Google Maps data.
Combinations with photo sharing websites, such as Flickr, are used to create "memory maps".[clarification needed What are memory maps?] Using copies of the Keyholesatellite
photos, users have taken advantage of image annotation features to
provide personal histories and information regarding particular points
of the area.

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